by Hester Blatt Shapiro

TONY SARG MAGIC: How it Touched Our Family

by

Hester Blatt Shapiro

HOW MANY TV VIEWERS who adore the Muppets, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, and Bil Baird's huge puppet family are aware that all of them are the grandchildren of Tony Sarg's marionettes? Indeed, it was the great Tony Sarg, more than anyone, who awakened the American public to the uniqueness of puppetry. During the 20's and 30's he travelled the length and breadth of America with his marionette company, producing all kinds of shows, from fairy tales to serious drama.

Familiar as I was with Tony Sarg's marionettes, I didn't learn until recently that one of his major inventions was the enormous heliumfilled Macy Parade balloons, and that he was a prolific illustrator of books and magazines. Nor did I know that my favorite island was also his.

In August, 1983, three generations of our family vacationed on Nantucket (a "first" for our third generation). Everyone had a fabulous time. By coincidence, it was also, for me, pure nostalgia. And exhilarating. Because I learned that 1984 had been proclaimed "Tony Sarg Year on Nantucket". On a casual visit to the island in 1920, Tony Sarg, enchanted by its silvery whimsy, had made it his family's summer home for many years thereafter. Some of his drawings and paintings were on exhibit there at the time of our vacation.

Tony Sarg... that name evoked ancient memories; memories that were highly personal. I had not heard his name since, perhaps, the early thirties, when the Blatt family presented weekly marionette shows at home. Our theatre, the first private marionette theatre in Boston, was in operation for about eight years. It probably would never have come into being were it not for the inspiration and guidance of Tony Sarg's books.

S o . . . l e t m e t e l l y o u a b o u t i t :

Anyone who has been a part of the touchable, pretend world of marionettes is forever caught. That mini-world is real as well as makebelieve. This combination is the essence of its charm. Puppets afford possibilities of expression unlike any others: "your characters may say whatever you want them to, yet each puppet is his own person and bears the "responsibility" for what he says.

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HISTORIC NANTUCKET

Our theatre's raison d'etre was somewhat unusual.

My father, William (Billy) Blatt, a prominent Boston lawyer, teacher of law, judge, playright, raconteur, could not afford to be a writer by profession. But, while practising law, he managed to write articles on the law, epigrams, and thirty-six three-act plays. Some of the last were published and produced locally. My mother, Lucy, had been a student in my father's night class on Shakespeare. He thought she was beautiful. She thought he was brilliant. They married and had three daughters: Hester, Josephine (Jo) and Ouida.

For years my mother tried to sell a play - long distance - to a Broadway producer. She did succeed five or six times, even to the point of advance royalties, but each time something happened — like a war, the Crash, the Depression — to prevent a Broadway opening. Finally,' when one of his plays had been "doctored" mercilessly, my father was so frustrated that he exclaimed to his four female fans, "Let's have our own theatre! We'll have a marionette theatre and produce whatever we want to". We, in our early teens, agreed it was some kind of solution.

The first big problem was how to make the marionettes. In the not toodistant past puppeteers had been secretive about their methods. My father searched the libraries, asked around, found no practical directions. He began to experiment. What an ordeal for a lawyer-poet who couldn't turn a screw-driver without scraping a finger.

One day, however, he came home with a new book by Tony Sarg Sarg's instructions were clear and workable. From those diagrams came our own marionettes, about fourteen inches in height, modelled after Tony Sarg's. We even had in our company an Arabian princess who bled to death, much like one of Tony Sarg's.

Our Theater was sturdy and handsome because it was custommade by a builder, one of my father's clients. He owed him a legal fee and offered to build the theatre as payment.

A - A ^a^er an<^ sister Jo, an artist and poet, made the marionettes. I did the sets. Lucy, erstwhile actress, was casting director and coach from the audience of thirty or more, Lucy might choose a judge a pediatrician, a starving musician, a singer to read the parts backstage. But not before she gave them a whirlwind lesson in elocution. (Thev inS/nS "instant" hams.) My sister Ouida, an accomplished musician, played piano interludes before the show and during intermission. All of us, except Lucy, worked the marionettes. Among our repertoire were reveries after three Shakespeare plays and a verse play by Billy Blatt, an Arabian Nights tale, a Lord Dunsany one-acter. According to my father we had nearly ten thousand guests (no repeats) during the eight years that we presented the shows.

T ONY S AR G M A G IC 29

Eventually we did, of course, go our separate ways. We teenage daughters went on to the dating game plus theatre and biochemical research for Hester; teaching piano and concertizing for Ouida; both commercial and fine arts for Jo. Lucy and Billy, lacking their family staff, sought other involvements.

Something about my August 1983 "encounter with Tony Sarg" illustrates what happens — but should not — in our wide-ranging NOW world: Too few today — with the exception of those in puppetry and theatre arts — know the name Tony Sarg. His books, his scripts, his part in our country's artistic history should not be lost. Nor should that of any prime artistic mover. Why aren't there accessible spots (notwithstanding the Library of Congress) where historic books are preserved and available to everyone? It's a shame that library shelves are either over-crowded or that libraries lack funds to maintain shelves of historically important books like Tony Sarg's. To discover that books are "out of print", "nowhere to be found" (at least in the five sizable libraries in which I searched) is maddening. A fertile, productive future depends upon knowledge of the past. Even today Sarg's directions would be wondrous to young people who want to experiment.

In fact, I myself recently found answers to some puppetry questions in a remarkable book that should never be "out of print". I refer to "The Art of the Puppet" by Bil Baird. The photographs are superb, the text engaging. Baird, an early associate of Tony Sarg, gives a comprehensive view of puppetry, past and present, including anecdotes and little known facts: Puppetry, an ancient art hundreds of years old, developed in unbelievable corners of the world. (Puppets were even found in Nazi concentration camps.)

During the nineteenth century, travelling troupes emphasized "magic tricks" in their shows and jealously guarded their technical effects from each other as well as from the public. But by the 20th century it became clear that puppetry could do more than simply surprise audiences.

Today puppetry is a high art. Today the dramatic impact of the story and the characters is as important as theatrical effects. Tony Sarg played a crucial role in this transition to sophistication. He experimented and pioneered on his own. His audiences were stimulated to appreciate the range and scope of marionette theatre.

George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Schnitzler wrote for puppets. Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Gian-Carlo Menotti, George Sand and many other great artists expressed themselves through puppetry. Puppetry answers man's urge to recreate life. A many-layered art, it is more diverse than painting, sculpture, dance, song or story, for it has something of all of them.